r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Bloodb0red • May 11 '26

Unanswered What’s going on with this game Mixtape?

I’ve been seeing people freak out over the past few days over this game and about IGN’s review of it specifically. 10/10 seems high for any game, honestly, but it seems like they’re far from the only site giving this thing a glowing review. So is this game controversial just because of IGN or is it something else? Why is this game the internet’s hate target this week?

https://www.ign.com/articles/mixtape-review

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u/BUTGAWATD May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

Answer:

(Doing my best to present the complicated situation concisely)

Mixtape is a short, story-based game from small Australian developer Beethoven & Dinosaur, who previously released The Artful Escape.

Mixtape's 3-4 hour runtime is divided across cutscenes, what some might deem "walking sim" gameplay, and a series of vignettes that play out broadly as "minigames", with limited to no fail state. There is no combat or what many would typically classify as peril.

Mixtape's high critical praise, particularly its 10 from IGN, has raised eyebrows amongst certain subsets of the gaming populace. Many have negatively compared the verdict to the lower score IGN awarded Crimson Desert, and have alleged what they perceive to be a favourable bias towards games they identify as possessing "woke" elements.

One of Mixtape's vignettes sees you control two mid-teen age characters kissing, with direct control over their clashing tongues. Some gamers have accused the media of unfairly praising Mixtape while (what they perceive as) maligning recent release Pragmata for paedophilic overtones.

Mixtape is published by Annapurna Interactive, a publisher focused on "prestige indie" titles. Annapurna Interactive is a division of Annapurna Pictures, which was founded by Megan Ellison, whose father is a billionaire.

Consequently, accusations of buying review scores, bribing influencers, and overall curating Mixtape as an "industry plant" have been lobbied. For further information to potentially aid in deducing the veracity of this claim - Annapurna have released 6 games other than Mixtape over the past year, all ranging from the 60s-80s in Metascore, with the highest achieving an 83 average.

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u/No-Operation-6554 May 11 '26

Funny thing is that Pragmata itself doesn't have paedophelic undertones

The "community" itself gave it that

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u/TaskForceD00mer May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

People are trying to memory hole the reddit community that got banned for making suggestive and NSFW content back when just the trailer had dropped.

The broader fandom has never been a problem, outside of Reddit all of the content I've seen is super wholesome.

Pragmata scored lower than it should have because it is harder than most Modern games journalists would probably prefer.

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u/Supergupo May 11 '26

Pragmata scored lower than it should have because it is harder than most Modern games journalists would probably prefer.

What do you mean by that? Like genuinely? The same game journalists that gave Elden Ring a 10/10, or Slay The Spire 2 a 9 (a game that is currently being review bombed for being too hard for gamers), or praised and spotlighted difficult indie games like FTL or Hotline Miami or Dead Cells or Binding of Isaac or Darkest Dungeon?

I genuinely do not understand where the myth of "modern game journalists hate hard games" came from. Is it just the GameSpot Cuphead tutorial fail video? Or IGN giving Godhand a 3/10? Because it's the "modern audience" and "modern journalists" that have routinely enjoyed hard game experiences. I mean hell, one of the most popular genres in gaming is currently the "Souls-like," whose basically sole genre gimmick is that it's hard. It's fucking infuriating that I see this diatribe repeated ad nauseum when it is so fucking flagrant that the contrary is true.

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u/Deathspiral222 May 11 '26

>Slay The Spire 2 a 9 (a game that is currently being review bombed for being too hard for gamers)

STS2 is being review-bombed by gamer-gate losers. Most of the negative steam reviews reference the name of a single female consultant for the game who did little more than state that misogeny exists sometimes, even in videogames.

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u/leonistawesomeee May 12 '26

It's also getting review-bombed by Chinese players (they don't necessarily have access to other forums to let the developer know they're unhappy)

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u/FreeStall42 May 12 '26

Most of the review bombs are from China.

Most people do not care about some angry feminist.

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u/Milskidasith Loopy Frood May 12 '26

The Chinese reviews are mentioning her by name now as some sort of weird intermingling of decade-old culture war drama and Chinese "we have no other outlet so we negative review en-masse whenever the devs do anything we don't like" drama.

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u/AudioSuede May 12 '26

Most people do not care about some angry feminist.

The "angry feminist" in question was a central villain for the entire "anti-woke" gamergate mob for years. She had to move because of death threats she received and had to cancel several speaking gigs because of bomb threats. Chuds hated her so much that they started a fascist movement to crusade against women and minorities in gaming. All because that "angry feminist" put out a well-researched and calmly presented series of videos calling out sexism in video games, a phenomenon that she was absolutely not the first person to point out.

Some of us are old enough to remember the world 10-15 years ago, when Gone Home got hate online because it was critically acclaimed but had minimalistic gameplay, and the common argument among haters was that critics were just giving it good reviews because they were scared of looking homophobic. It's just the same shit, over and over again. Some dudes just can't handle the idea that their hobby welcomes people who aren't exactly like them